Like many public healthcare facilities in South-Eastern Europe, the Public Health Institute of Republika Srpska (PHI RS) has recently faced the problem of irregular inflow of funds from the state budget and health insurance fund and had to seek for additional sources of funding. The objective of this paper is to assess the importance of projects for operation of the public health institutes in transitional countries where multiple donors are active, based on the PHI RS’s case. The RS PHI has recently assumed five different roles during projects. In the role of the final project beneficiary, the RS PHI was one of the target organizations who were to benefit from premises renovation, equipment delivery, strengthening of staff capacities, exchange of experience and practices through study visits, improvement of legal environment or advancing its position in the health system. As the project partner, the PHI RS has used its unique position in the health system to attract project funding. The PHI RS has as contractor provided its services under different projects. Occasionally, the PHI RS has been the resource center that provided experts needed for implementation of the projects. It promoted the PHI RS’s expertise and helped the PHI RS to retain and reward its most qualified staff. Potentially the most beneficial role for the PHI RS is the one of the main applicant for projects. All other roles have supported building of the PHI RS’s capacity to take the role of the lead applicant in different types of projects. In transitional countries where donors do not pool their funds, the public health institutes have a chance to exploit availability of multiple sources of financing and to benefit from parallel participation in different projects.

This paper explains passive collection of solar radiation energy using transparent thermal insulators. Transparent thermal insulators are transparent for sunlight, at the same time those are very good thermal insulators. Transparent thermal insulators can be placed instead of standard conventional thermal insulators and additionally transparent insulators can capture solar radiation, transform it into heat and save heat just as standard insulators. Using transparent insulators would lead to reduce in usage of fossil fuels and would help protection of an environment and reduce effects of global warming, etc.

BackgroundRheumatic diseases in children are associated with significant morbidity andpoor health-related quality of life (HRQOL). There is no health-relatedquality of life (HRQOL) scale available specifically for children with lesscommon rheumatic diseases. These diseases share several features withsystemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) such as their chronic episodic nature,multi-systemic involvement, and the need for immunosuppressive medications.HRQOL scale developed for pediatric SLE will likely be applicable tochildren with systemic inflammatory diseases.FindingsWe adapted Simple Measure of Impact of Lupus Erythematosus in Youngsters(SMILEY©) to Simple Measure of Impact of Illness in Youngsters(SMILY©-Illness) and had it reviewed by pediatric rheumatologists forits appropriateness and cultural suitability. We tested SMILY©-Illnessin patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases and then translated it into28 languages.Nineteen children (79% female, n=15) and 17 parents participated. The meanage was 12±4 years, with median disease duration of 21 months (1-172months). We translated SMILY©-Illness into the following 28 languages:Danish, Dutch, French (France), English (UK), German (Germany), German(Austria), German (Switzerland), Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil),Slovene, Spanish (USA and Puerto Rico), Spanish (Spain), Spanish(Argentina), Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Venezuela), Turkish, Afrikaans,Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Arabic (Egypt), Czech, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian,Japanese, Romanian, Serbian and Xhosa.ConclusionSMILY©-Illness is a brief, easy to administer and score HRQOL scale forchildren with systemic rheumatic diseases. It is suitable for use acrossdifferent age groups and literacy levels. SMILY©-Illness with itsavailable translations may be used as useful adjuncts to clinical practiceand research.